Some block eight residents have put pot plants on their balconies. One woman has hung Chinese lanterns.

Kurringal Flats was built by the federal government in 1966. At its peak there were eight blocks which housed 350 people. Two blocks were demolished in 2001.

Another three were bulldozed two years later and Kurringal Court retirement village, for Territory Housing tenants aged over 55, was built on the land.

Gilbert Shaw in his apartment at Kurringal Flats in Darwin. Picture: Daniel Hartley-Allen

Now there are 91 tenants living in 78 units. A further six are empty. Everyone agrees the worst building is block six in the middle.

Mary's neighbour, John Mu, whose screen door was recently broken down in a police raid, tells me that block six is not safe.

"When you are going in there be careful. They can punch you or stab you. You can see the blood on the ground. Police go there all the time," he says.

Block four, on Dick Ward Drive, is considered to be somewhere in-between not as safe as eight but far better than six.

I sleep on Mary's couch for two nights - the fans buzzing full blast in the build-up heat.

I can't hear the screams that residents complain keep them up at night.

I have an offer to stay for three nights at someone else's refurbished flat at the top of block six. So I move my sleeping bag to the middle block from where the nightly shouts emanate.

John O'Brien at his home at Kurringal Flats in Darwin. Picture: Daniel Hartley-Allen

The Worst Block

Gilbert Shaw, 58, gives an animal-like scream that only years of hard-drinking can achieve.

Someone has stuck a fire hose through a hole in the flyscreen of his kitchen window and flooded his block six apartment.

It is the second time in 18 months he has been flooded out.

Hosing the apartment down was probably a good thing - it looks like it has not been cleaned since the last fire hose attack. Cockroaches crawl around the living room without fear.

There is still a large blood stain in the hallway where Mr Shaw was bashed with a metal broom handle during a robbery a month earlier.

He sits on a dirty mattress and sucks on a bong.

Daily life at Kurringal Flats Picture: Daniel Hartley-Allen

"I am sick of this," he says. "Where are security? This is bulls***."

People in block six say jealous men target Mr Shaw because they don't like their women coming over to his house when his disability pension arrives.

Other times the enfeebled alcoholic - who has a large scar on his chest from a heart operation - is attacked because he is an easy target from which to steal money and food.

Mr Shaw denies enticing women to his flat with money, gunja and booze.

"Girls just come over here and have a bit of fun - the dark girls love me," he says.

Mr Shaw was put in Kurringal Flats after he underwent the heart operation in Adelaide. Before that he was homeless.

But after 18 months at Kurringal he has been given a final warning to clean up or get out.

Transvestite Ziggy Wilhelmsen at home at Kurringal Flats in Darwin. Picture: Daniel Hartley-Allen

"I am trying to start a new life but it is all going wrong," he says.

Block six is certainly far grimmer than eight. People openly smoke bongs on the balconies, empty deal bags litter the floor and there are frequent eruptions of rage between tenants day and night.

The residents blame the violence and anti-social behaviour on visitors.

"The biggest problem is not the people living here all the time, it is their relatives that come here and take over the place," retiree John O'Brien, 85, of block eight tells me. I found that was not true.

The incidents of violence and anti-social behaviour that I saw were mostly caused by people who live at Kurringal Flats.

After talking to Mr Shaw, I sit in the stairwell with a Torres Strait island family who are visiting relatives that live in block six.

They chat and laugh drinking alcohol from plastic bottles as the fights and drama caused by the Kurringal residents ebb and flow around them.

Residents living at Kurringal Flats in Darwin. Picture: Daniel Hartley-Allen

A grandmother in the group sings me a lullaby she wrote for her three-year-old grandson.

Her daughter has moved to Sydney with the little boy and she misses him.

"Look to the sky. For Jetstar, Fly him back to me, Tears I cry, Narima, You broke my heart, Bring him back to me."

It is beautiful. We ask her to sing it again.

Cops and Grog

Old man Ezra Young is sitting at a picnic table in the common area when his girlfriend cracks him over the head with an almost empty bottle of rum.

She has just had a case of VB tipped out by police and she is furious.

Gilbert Shaw has two pieces of steel at his bedside to use in self defence. Picture: Daniel Hartley-Allen

Mr Young, 68, is unsympathetic. He is telling the rest of her drinking party that they got what they deserved.

"That is their law. They are public servants. That is their law and it is right," he says.

His girlfriend runs up behind screaming his name before crashing the bottle on the back of his head.

It does not break, so she throws it at his feet where it smashes.

I clear off as all hell breaks loose.

It is pension week at Kurringal Flats and the booze and gunja are flowing freely.

Some drinkers managed to run into the darkness when the police turned up, but the people at the picnic table were too slow.

The daily life at Kurringal Flats in Darwin. Picture: Daniel Hartley-Allen

An officer lobbed a wine skin into the car park where it split.

Mr Young's girlfriend drunkenly scolds the officers as they pour her cans into the grass.

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